The Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition

Joan Newmann

Carrageen Mousse and the Boy From Nepal

For Prem

It sits on the plate like a white breast
On a lying woman - moss boiled in milk
The jelly of it - a taste as sea-ward
As rock and sand - dark grit
Of where it has been.
His tongue expects rich buffalo milk -
Taken into the mind from his granny’s spoon.
This . . .strange in the mouth of mountain -
It is the food of the hungry
It is nowhere on earth.